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Jan Siberechts may have taken liberties with his painting
which has misled Charlecote volunteers for years. It is possible he
only sketched the house and then created the painting later and did
not quite remember things. You can see on the enlargement from the painting
that the house is shown with only two turrets. Some people believe that
the original house was built with only two turrets but one of our most
knowledgeable, but unfortunately deceased volunteers, Ted Veitch, always
maintained that there were four. An American researcher, Eddy Krakhmalnikov,
has unearthed the earliest representation of Charlecote in the Sheldon
tapestries of Warwickshire from 1580 and it clearly shows the four turrets.
So it is a bit of an open question.
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